Free Republic

THE New York Times' news room is bracing for a bloodbath in the next 10 days. The word from inside is that approximately 50 unionized journalists have accepted the buyout proposal, and only another 20 non-union editorial employees have gotten on board. That means the ax could fall on as many as 30 editorial people in the company's first-ever mass firing of journalists in its 156-year history.

Media Bias: Why would two Muslim men travel 3,000 miles to kill random people in the nation's capital a year after 9/11? CNN investigated and found Islamic terror had nothing to do with it. ..... ......... "Somehow CNN's "special investigations unit" managed to overlook this pile of courtroom evidence. It showed only one drawing — a self portrait of Malvo shedding tears."

It's telling when country luminary Merle Haggard has an entry on Rolling Stone magazine's list of top protest songs. Country musicians and their fans tend to hail from conservative states with high enlistment rates. Then again, the toll of the war on the sons and daughters of these states has been acute

The bipartisan opposition to President Bush's troop-increase plan has proved more intense than his advisers hoped and has left them scrambling to find support, but the White House is banking on the assumption that it can execute its "new way forward" in Iraq before Congress can derail it. The plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq was virtually guaranteed to provoke a furor in Washington, Bush advisers said, but the storm was exacerbated by the slow, leaky way that the White House reached a decision. The policy review stretched two months after the election and the essence of the...

Gates Before the Senate: Welcome Candor on Iraq It didn't take long, at his confirmation hearings for Defense Secretary, for Robert Gates to give Senate Democrats some answers they've been desperate for. After four years of rosy predictions and verbal sparring from Donald Rumsfeld over the Iraq war, Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee were desperate for some candor out of the man George Bush has picked to replace him — and that's what they got as Bob Gates's confirmation hearing began Tuesday morning. Sen. Carl Levin, who will take over the committee chairmanship in January, hit Gates with...

Iraq's Interior Ministry has charged 57 employees, including high-ranking officers, with human rights crimes for their roles in the torture of hundreds of detainees once jailed in a notorious eastern Baghdad prison known as Site 4, officials announced Monday. The charges marked the first time the present Iraqi government has taken criminal action against members of its own security forces for operating torture chambers inside Interior Ministry prisons, said Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a ministry spokesman. "Whoever abuses power and authority will be held accountable, regardless of their position or background," Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told reporters in an opulent...

If only one thing comes out of the midterm elections this coming Tuesday, it ought to be this: The nation is tired of polemics and ideological politics. It's time for politicians on both the right and the left to move back toward the center, and come up with practical solutions to the serious problems the nation faces: How to get out of the mess in Iraq. How to pay for the baby-boomers' medical care and Social Security costs. How to meet the undeniable challenge of global warming. How to bring the budget back into balance without shredding the safety net...

The verdict against the former dictator, which the U.S. originally hoped would help the country exorcise its demons, won't make a difference to Iraqis' violence-filled lives For those seeking omens on Saddam Hussein's day of judgment, Mother Nature obliged: Sunday dawned wet, cool and clean in Baghdad after overnight showers rinsed the city of several layers of desert sand. Late in the morning, Ahmed Hussein, a government-employed street sweeper, looked up into the overcast and still-rumbling skies and nodded approvingly. "This is the right weather for a day like this," he said. "The rain is God's blessing upon the verdict."...

The Republican Party on Tuesday gained a late burst of energy in its flagging midterm election campaign following remarks by John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, in which he said college students could “get stuck in Iraq” if they do not study hard.While campaigning in California, the Massachusetts senator told a college crowd on Monday: “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” George W. Bush on Tuesday seized on...

WASHINGTON -- Deteriorating security in Iraq and bureaucratic wrangling between the State Department and the Pentagon have undermined the US government's effort to train provincial governments, according to a report to Congress released yesterday by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. The training, done by "provincial reconstruction teams" of soldiers, aid workers, and diplomats, is meant to coach local authorities in Iraq on how to deliver basic services to their municipalities, and to take over duties from the US-led coalition, such as running elections and making decisions over local budgets. The teams were considered such a critical part of...

"The principal sin of the neoconservatives is overbearing arrogance. It is not so much that they have been wrong. It is that nobody has ever convinced them that they've ever been wrong." I didn't say that. Oh, I said stuff like it a few times, but that particular quote come from David Keene, who is the chairman of the American Conservative Union. Like a lot of people on the rightish side of the political spectrum, he bought the rhetoric, he accepted the brilliance of Donald Rumsfeld's idea for a brand-new downsized "smart" army, he hung in there when things appeared...

60 Minutes' Steve Kroft Reports On Disappearance Of More Than $500 Million To Equip Iraqi Army (CBS) More than half a billion dollars earmarked to fight the insurgency in Iraq was stolen by people the U.S. had entrusted to run the country's Ministry of Defense before the 2005 elections, according to Iraqi investigators. Iraq's former minister of finance says coalition members like the U.S. and Britain are doing little to help recover the money or catch suspects, most of whom fled the country.

North Carolina remains a strong source of Army recruits despite an unpopular war in Iraq that has left 3,000 troops dead and 20,000 wounded. The state now ranks fifth nationally for new active-duty Army recruits, according to the Defense Department. A U.S. Census survey that shows North Carolina ranks 10th in the nation for the number of men between the ages of 18 and 24. The state in the past year churned out 3,424 new active-duty soldiers. Patriotism, a generation of young adults willing to serve and familiarity with the military were among the key factors behind North Carolina's rank...

The growing doubts among GOP lawmakers about the administration's Iraq strategy, coupled with the prospect of Democratic wins in next month's midterm elections, will soon force the Bush administration to abandon its open-ended commitment to the war, according to lawmakers in both parties, foreign policy experts and others involved in policymaking. Senior figures in both parties are coming to the conclusion that the Bush administration will be unable to achieve its goal of a stable, democratic Iraq within a politically feasible time frame. Agitation is growing in Congress for alternatives to the administration's strategy of keeping Iraq in one piece...

No sooner did Congress authorize construction of a 700-mile fence on the U.S.-Mexico border last week than lawmakers rushed to approve separate legislation that ensures it will never be built, at least not as advertised, according to Republican lawmakers and immigration experts. GOP leaders have singled out the fence as one of the primary accomplishments of the recently completed session. Lawmakers plan to highlight their $1.2 billion down payment on its construction as they campaign in the weeks before the midterm elections. Shortly before recessing late Friday, the House and Senate gave the Bush administration leeway to distribute the money...

(CBS) Veteran Washington reporter Bob Woodward writes in his new book of fierce efforts inside the White House to get rid of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a revelation that has caused a tremendous amount of concern at the White House. In Mike Wallace’s interview with Woodward, to be broadcast on 60 Minutes this Sunday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m. ET/PT, the reporter also claims that Henry Kissinger is among those advising Mr. Bush. Woodward writes that several people inside the White House have pushed to oust Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The ranks of those calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation included the...

GARDEZ, Afghanistan — After completing their deployment to this remote firebase, the Green Berets of ODA 2021 left for home covered in glory. The 10-member Special Forces team, part of the Alabama National Guard, returned to their families in the spring of 2003 with tales to tell of frenzied firefights and narrow escapes. Its commander had nominated each of his men — as well as himself — for medals for valor. The team's performance was heralded as evidence that the Guard could play as equals with the regular Army in the war on terrorism. But the team also had come...

So President Musharraf is military dictator turned tease, making us wait for his book launch in New York tomorrow for more details of the Bush administration’s crudely worded threat against Pakistan if it did not support the war on terror.“Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,” was the graphic warning from deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, though admittedly it came one day after September 11. Armitage has disputed the wording but the fact that such a threat had to be made (followed by a nice little package of $5 billion of aid)...

Anderson Cooper interviews Ahmadinjead. Will he give softballs like Mike Wallace and Brian Williams?

Seeking a deal with Senate Republicans on the rules governing the interrogation of terrorism suspects, the White House has dropped its insistence on redefining the obligations of the United States under the Geneva Conventions, members of Congress and aides said Tuesday. The new White House position, sent to Capitol Hill on Monday night, set off intensified negotiations between administration officials and a small group of Republican senators. The senators have blocked President Bush’s original proposal for legislation to clarify which interrogation techniques are permissible and to establish trial procedures for terrorism suspects now in United States military custody. The two...

Getting Desperate, Bush Plays The Terror Card In a way, you can’t blame him. He can’t defend his record on the economy, health care, immigration or Social Security. He certainly can’t defend the war in Iraq. There’s only one way George Bush and Republicans can possibly win in November — and that’s to scare the hell out of the American people. So it’s no surprise that President Bush gave four speeches in one week, all trying to tie an unpopular war in Iraq to a still-popular (barely) war on terror. If you believe George Bush — and fewer and fewer...

CONSERVATIVES are dreading the November elections. The Republican capture of the House of Representatives in 1994 was one of modern conservatism’s signal political accomplishments. Now the Democrats are poised to take back the House. If that happens, however, conservatives will find several silver linings in the outcome. It would be worse for conservatives if Republicans actually gained seats. The Congressional wing of the party lost its reformist zeal years ago and has been trying to win elections based on pork and incumbency. An election victory would reward that strategy, leaving the congressmen even less interested in restraining spending, reforming government...

STELLARTON, Nova Scotia, Sept. 12 — There are perils to being unattached in the stodgy world of diplomacy. Sometimes it has seemed that all Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice needs to do is show up in public with a man, and people start talking. The single, sophisticated American secretary of state once drew notice for wearing black stiletto knee-high boots with an above-the-knee black skirt while reviewing American troops in Germany, so she is bound to attract gossip. That is particularly true on the dry, acronym-ridden diplomatic circuit of NATO meetings, APEC forums and Asean conclaves, where much imagination has...

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has taken his place among the spirits permanently haunting West 43rd Street. “The basic goal,” New York Times reporter David Barstow said, “is to make it more difficult for a future Fitzgerald to follow the breadcrumbs of phone records and notes and expense slips from reporter to source.” Mr. Barstow, the Pulitzer- and Peabody-winning investigative reporter, was on the phone Sept. 12, shortly before The Times began this year’s round of legal seminars for the staff. The sessions, led by Times lawyers George Freeman and David McCraw, have traditionally offered a brush-up on privacy, sourcing and general...

Exclusive: New U.S. Government Videotape Simulates Terrorist Attacks September 12, 2006 7:41 PM Brian Ross and Asa Eslocker Report: ABC News has obtained videotapes of dramatic U.S. government field tests of new methods to thwart terrorist attacks against U.S. embassies abroad. In the videotape tests, government scientists stage real terror attacks -- slamming trucks at high speed into barriers and exploding bombs near buildings. Multiple camera angles capture the blasts' effects on test dummies, posing as diplomats seated at their desks. The U.S. Department of State spends $2 million a year to develop better boundary security equipment against such potential...

...However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast -- of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds -- none of us could have predicted this. Five years later this space is still empty. Five years later there is no memorial to the dead. Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals. Five years later this country's wound is still open. Five years...

The Times' executive editor accuses the Bush White House of stirring up a "partisan hatefest" against the paper over its revelation of an anti-terrorist program that monitored international banking transactions. Deep inside New York magazine's front-page profile of Times Executive Editor Bill Keller (ludicrously called a "true centrist" by writer Joe Hagan) is this gem about his reaction to White House criticism of the paper's exposure of its tracking of international banking transactions for terror clues: "They pissed me off....I think the administration is genuinely distressed that we ran the story over their objections. I think they were embarrassed by...

Just before sunset on Sept. 11, 2001, the worst day America has known, I snuck past police barricades and made my way to the roof of a high-rise building about eight blocks from ground zero - the closest I could get - and stared at the landscape of horror. Smoke shrouded the 16-acre site. Twisted metal columns jutted from an enormous crater, all of it blanketed in white ash. The only flecks of color came from the yellow stripes on the coats of rescue workers. Finally away from deadlines, it was supposed to be my moment to grieve. But I...

It has become grimly commonplace. While the horrific strikes in the United States are foremost in Americans’ minds, other parts of the world — as far away as Bali, but in large cities in particular — have also found themselves the targets of vicious attacks in recent years. The Op-Ed page asked writers who know some of these cities well to describe the events and consider their aftermath.

WASHINGTON - For three years, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald knew the answer to one of the biggest questions in Washington: Who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame? Now that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage acknowledged this week that he was the leaker, the new question is what Fitzgerald has been looking for during a quest that rattled the White House and sent a reporter to jail.

Former president Bill Clinton is blasting the ABC 9/11 docudrama “The Path to 9/11” for being inaccurate and unfair. You’ve got to love the irony of that. Wasn’t he the guy who hired Hollywood filmmakers to create a campaign biopic of his life? Sure, “The Path to 9/11” makes up dialogue, invents scenes and creates a composite character or two, but sometimes you have to craft the facts in a certain way to tell a complicated story. Just like sometimes you have to reconsider what the definition of “is” is when you don’t want people to know you’ve had an...

My fellow members of the American Legion, I have made some serious mistakes and miscalculations in our struggle against Islamic extremism over the past five years. Some of these were made out of anger and impatience in the months after we were so viciously attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. Others were made out of my heartfelt belief that our American values—freedom, democracy, market economics—are the surest path away from the fury and despair that have plagued the nations at the heart of the Islamic world. I still believe deeply in those values. I am still convinced that we are facing...

As Chad Kingsbury watches his daughter playing in the sandbox behind their suburban Chicago house, the thought that has flashed through his mind a million times in her two years of life comes again: Chloe will never be sick. Not, at least, with the inherited form of colon cancer that has devastated his family, killing his mother, her father and her two brothers, and that he too may face because of a genetic mutation that makes him unusually susceptible. By subjecting Chloe to a genetic test when she was an eight-cell embryo in a petri dish, Mr. Kingsbury and his...

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 2 — Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul. He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations. “This year’s harvest...

The new war in the Middle East is not being fought with bombs or bullets. Instead, it is being waged amid the rubble and wreckage of Lebanon's streets, and the prize is the support and gratitude of the hundreds of thousands of citizens attempting to piece together their shattered lives. At Mehdi High School in Beirut, now a temporary administrative center for refugees who lost homes in the war with Israel, Abdel Hussein Hodroj asks a bearded young official behind a desk for help. The young man doesn't work for the Lebanese government or a humanitarian group or a United...

Monday, Aug 28 Couric Gets Bush For 1st 'Evening News' Katie Couric has landed an interview with President George W. Bush at the White House for the CBS primetime special "Five Years Later -- How Safe Are We?" The special will air from 10 to 11pm on Sept. 6. Excerpts from the interview will air on Couric's first evening newscast on Sept. 5 (and on the Early Show the next morning)...

This is a great interactive election map showing which seats are safe, which are leaners, which voted for Bush vs Kerry, etc etc. Pretty amazing how we went from the dems winning both house and senate, to at least the house, to now maybe neither-at least according to the NYTimes latest predictions. http://www.nytimes.com/ref/washington/2006ELECTIONGUIDE.html?currentDataSet=senANALYSIS

He supports tax cuts and the war in Iraq. He opposes stem cell research and the Medicare drug plan. He is a master of his movement’s medium, talk radio. Jesus Christ is his personal savior and Ronald Reagan his political idol. Conjure what might be called the perfect conservative, and chances are he would look a lot like Representative Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who in just three terms has turned 100 House allies into a vanguard and himself into one of his party’s rising stars..... Arriving in Washington, he was dismayed at conservatives’ support for government expansion. In 2001,...

<p>A federal study showing that fourth graders in charter schools score worse in reading and math than their public school counterparts should cause some soul-searching in Congress.</p> <p>Too many lawmakers seem to believe that the only thing wrong with American education is the public school system, and that converting lagging schools to charter schools would cause them to magically improve.</p>

KAYSERI, Turkey — As the muezzin heralded the noon prayers on a recent Friday, a small army of workers fanned out from an industrial park to take their places on mats in a nearby mosque. Fifteen minutes later, the prayers were over and the teachings of the Koran gave way to the demands of the factory floor. “In European countries, workers take a 15-minute smoking break; here we take a 15-minute prayer break,” said Ahmet Herdem, the mayor of Hacilar, a town of 20,000 people in central Anatolia, a deeply religious and socially conservative region which has produced some of...

WASHINGTON — Since U.S. forces attacked in 2003, Rep. Christopher Shays, a moderate Republican from Connecticut's liberal 4th District, has been a stalwart defender of the Iraq war. "I've been carrying the bucket when it comes to the war," Shays said in September. But facing an antiwar Democratic opponent in a tough midterm election race, Shays is starting to express reservations. In a telephone interview Friday after he returned from his 14th trip to Iraq, Shays said that he believed the U.S. should consider setting a timetable for the withdrawal of its troops, and that he planned to hold congressional...

by Mark Finkelstein August 27, 2006 - 06:29 "Comrade. Potato production 70% below target for 4th year in row in five-year plan!" "True, Kommissar. But we have solution. Will implement training and preparation program for workers!" "Budem - let's drink!" The ostensible purpose of this morning's New York Times editorial was to exult at the results of a study finding that 4th-grade charter school students performed worse than their public school counterparts, even when controlling for socio-economic background. Like a tiger on the smallest of mouses, the Times pounced on this one result to proclaim that it was "Exploding the...

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the three-year prison sentence which a Beijing court imposed yesterday on New York Times researcher Zhao Yan for alleged fraud while dismissing the original charge of treason and divulging state secrets. “The court cleared Zhao of the treason charge for lack of evidence and it should have done the same with the fraud charge,” the press freedom organisation said. “Zhao is known for his commitment to China’s peasants and the accusations that were brought against him were all ridiculous. We support his sister’s request for an appeal and we call for his provisional release as...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 - The State Department is investigating whether Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs in southern Lebanon violated secret agreements with the United States that restrict when it can employ such weapons, two officials said.The investigation by the department's Office of Defense Trade Controls began this week, after reports that three types of American cluster munitions, anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area, have been found in many areas of southern Lebanon and were responsible for civilian casualties.Gonzalo Gallegos, a State Department spokesman, said, "We have heard the allegations that these munitions were used, and we...

"Fairfax Native Says Allen's Words Stung" By Fredrick Kunkle Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 25, 2006; Page B01 S.R. Sidarth had built an impressive record of achievements for such a young man: straight-A student at one of Fairfax County's finest high schools, a tournament chess player, a quiz team captain, a sportswriter at his college newspaper, a Capitol Hill intern and an active member of the Hindu temple his parents helped establish in Maryland. But for all his achievements, the moment that thrust him into the national spotlight this month came when Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) called him "macaca."...

THREE years into the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, everyone from slicksleeved privates fighting for survival in Ramadi to the echelons above reality at the Pentagon still believes that eliminating insurgents will eliminate the insurgency. They are wrong. There is a difference between killing insurgents and fighting an insurgency. In three years, the Sunni insurgency has grown from nothing into a force that threatens our national objective of establishing and maintaining a free, independent and united Iraq. During that time, we have fought insurgents with airstrikes, artillery, the courage and tactical excellence of our forces, and new technology worth billions of...

The Osama Card Expect the Republicans to use the specter of the terror leader to frighten voters ahead of the elections. /snip Democrats have a good chance of winning back one or both houses of Congress, and they’re wondering whether this election’s October surprise could be capturing Osama. Peter Bergen, one of the few Western journalists to interview the terrorist leader, spoke at a panel in Washington this week after a preview screening of a new CNN documentary, “In the Footsteps of Bin Laden.” Bergen said the administration has a pretty good idea where bin Laden is—based in part on...

The Marine officer who commanded the battalion involved in the Haditha killings last November did not consider the deaths of 24 Iraqis, many of them women and children, unusual and did not initiate an inquiry, according to a sworn statement he gave to military investigators in March. "I thought it was very sad, very unfortunate, but at the time, I did not suspect any wrongdoing from my Marines," Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marines, said in the statement. I did not have any reason to believe that this was anything other than...

A federal judge's ruling that the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping is unconstitutional set off a flurry of political responses yesterday, as Republicans tried to keep control of the national security debate amid signs that their own party's ranks may be breaking under the pressure of the Iraq war. President Bush concluded a discussion on the economy with a challenge to Democrats, many of whom had hailed U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's ruling that the NSA's wiretapping efforts violate both the Bill of Rights and federal law. "Those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of...

AUSTIN -- A small group of super-rich political contributors, giving at least $25,000 a year, will put at least $10 million into Republican Gov. Rick Perry's re-election treasury as part of a fundraising corps the campaign calls the Century Council. ADVERTISEMENT Donors pledging at least $100,000 get invitations to private luncheons with the governor, and many are beneficiaries of government business and plum state appointments, The Dallas Morning News reported today. Three Century Council members have lucrative contracts to help build Perry's multibillion-dollar toll-road project. The state has deposited millions in investment funds operated by three other top-tier givers. Sixteen...